Under this overwhelming pressure, Olivia could no longer maintain her spell.
Fragments of magical radiance flickered across her body as her form abruptly expanded, reverting to the shape of a silver dragon.
Yet this young silver dragon, over ten meters long and a gargantuan beast before mortals, looked like a dainty kitten before the red dragon—the crown of her head could not even reach his chest.
Olivia did her best to muster a low roar.
"Awoo..."
"R-Red dragon, before you stands the Silver Stars, Ol—Olivia."
Her proclamation carried no conviction whatsoever.
The silver dragon struggled to maintain her composure. She spread her gleaming silver wings, slightly arched her back, and fixed the red dragon with a hostile gaze.
Even with all her efforts, her wings trembled faintly, her talons dug hard into the ground, and her bright silver scales bristled almost upright.
This bone-deep terror was nearly impossible to disguise.
Confronted with threats resembling a startled whelp's bluster, Cassius merely spoke unhurriedly.
"Don't be nervous, silver dragon."
"Perhaps we can talk—about your trespassing on my territory."
Though her body continued to quiver, the silver dragon summoned the courage to speak. "Th-this was never your territory to begin with! You're nothing more than a cruel invader."
Cassius slowly spread his wings, casting a colossal shadow that engulfed the entire silver dragon. A grin crept across his grotesque, four-horned draconic head.
"Very well, silver dragon. Then I shall first teach you—"
"—what basic manners are."
Watching the red dragon slowly draw near, Olivia felt despair rising in her heart.
A monster like this was far beyond anything she could fight.
However, the larger a dragon grew, the clumsier their bodies became, and that had to be doubly true for the nearly thirty-meter-long red dragon before her.
Perhaps she could exploit that flaw to find a final chance at survival.
"Roar—"
Olivia let out a low cry. Several scales on her chest illuminated with an intensely piercing silver glow—spell carvings. Olivia was no "Spellhoarding dragon"; these were high-tier runes inscribed by her grandfather, her ultimate trump card to preserve her life.
In an instant, multiple spells took effect across her body, granting qualitative enhancements to both her speed and defenses.
Yet that was not the end.
*Crown of Stars.*
Hundreds of dazzling, star-shaped motes of light manifested, orbiting above the silver dragon's head and around her wings.
The starlight bathed her silver scales and reflected all around, setting her entire form ablaze with brilliance.
At this moment, the silver dragon appeared almost sacred, resembling a celestial being hailing from Mount Celestia. Her moniker, "the Silver Stars," had truly not been earned in vain.
Those starlights morphed into brilliant meteors that streaked through the air, plunging straight toward the red dragon.
Seizing the opportunity, Olivia beat her wings and tucked in her body, darting at high speed toward the gap beside his flank.
She harbored no illusions of inflicting real harm on the red dragon; she merely sought to divert his attention and slip away in the confusion.
Yet the red dragon simply raised a claw, loosing a straight ray from its sharp tip.
*Spell Wither.*
The instant that unassuming ray made contact, the dazzling starlight all around dimmed and disintegrated into nothingness.
Mid-flight at high speed, Olivia's heart skipped a beat in horror. Only now did she remember that the "Lord of Cinders" before her had the ability to cast ninth-circle spells!
Yet what stunned her even more was yet to come.
That massive, nearly thirty-meter body showed not the slightest sluggishness. It moved like lightning—even more agile than her own—and interposed itself before her like a solid wall.
The silver dragon, rocketing forward at top speed, could not even adjust her course in time and nearly plowed straight into the red dragon's chest.
Cassius merely shot out a colossal claw, easily clamping down on her neck and hoisting her into the air like a kitten.
"Red dragon! Let me go!"
Olivia thrashed with all her might, swiping her claws wildly in midair, yet she could not break free of his grasp in the slightest.
The absolute disparity in strength and size was simply insurmountable. Before this colossal red dragon stretching nearly thirty meters, the young silver dragon was indeed little different from a kitten.
Exerting just a fraction more force, the red dragon hurled her aside.
Under that tremendous momentum, Olivia flew dozens of meters and tumbled several times across the floor before coming to a halt, abrasions marring her smooth silver wing membranes.
Olivia struggled onto her forelimbs, trying to push herself back up, but before she could even react, the red dragon swept down upon her like a tempest.
"Silver dragon, that was merely a modest chastisement," Cassius said flatly, pinning her to the floor with a single forelimb.
*Vagnerd's Dragon-Binding Circle.*
In the next moment, runes on the floor flared to life. Hundreds of chains burst from the ground, binding the young silver dragon fast and rendering her utterly immobilized.
"Let me go!"
"I am a scion of the ancient silver dragon Oszedro!" Olivia cried hoarsely, twisting her body without pause.
Sensing how inescapable the magic was and realizing she might be trapped for a very long time, she had no choice but to invoke her grandfather's name.
She struggled with every ounce of her strength, yet her efforts only made the magical chains flare with light and scorch her flesh, branding blackened streaks across her silvery hide.
Gazing down at the trapped silver dragon, Cassius said unhurriedly, "You may choose to linger here for hundreds or thousands of years, or... submit to me."
In this near-hopeless predicament, Olivia's heart surged with fury and grievance. She screamed with all her might, "Keep dreaming, red dragon!"
"A noble silver dragon bending the knee to a bandit of a red dragon, submitting to our wicked arch-nemesis—that is the most absurd joke in the world!"
"Where is Anhel? Where is he?!"
"What did you do to him?!"
Hearing this, Cassius was momentarily at a loss whether to laugh or cry.
He had never expected his alternate persona to linger in this silver dragon's mind for so long, nor had he anticipated that she still hadn't seen through the true identity of that so-called "gold dragon."
At the thought, Cassius played along with a sinister cackle, putting on the arrogant tone of a quintessential villain.
"Are all you metallic dragons like this?"
"Silver dragon, if you choose to resist to the bitter end, your fate will be no different from that foolish gold dragon's."
"You—"
Olivia's eyes instantly reddened, glistening with unshed tears.
Hearing the red dragon's words, she felt as though she had watched that familiar figure being ruthlessly crushed, that resolute face consumed by scorching flames.
"Damned evil dragon!"
She let out a roar, her voice breaking with tears. "I will never, ever bow to a vile monster like you! Even if it means death!"
Cassius stepped beside Olivia and leaned down playfully, inspecting her like prey until her scales prickled with dread.
"Evil?"
"How could I possibly be evil?"
The red dragon bared his fangs in a mocking smirk.
The silver dragon glared at him, grinding her teeth. "Cassius! Your crimes have long spread across Anzeta! Your infamy is known to all in the Northlands!"
"You raise an enormous army of monsters, waging aggressive expansion at will and greedily claiming every inch of land into your domain! You plunder wealth, seize cities, enslave people, and brutally persecute the virtuous..."
She pressed on without taking a breath.
"If that isn't evil, then evil does not exist in this world!"
Resigned to the certainty of death, Olivia spat her vicious curses, exhausting nearly every scathing word in her vocabulary.
Yet Cassius merely shook his head gently.
"That is merely your perspective. You aren't human; you are nothing more than an onlooker. Tsk, tsk... That is precisely the contradiction of you silver dragons. You pride yourselves on your closeness to humanity, yet you are arrogant beyond measure. You assume human forms, yet you never truly integrate into their society. You claim affinity, yet you cannot view them objectively—treating them, rather, as your pets."
"Do you think humanity is a monolithic whole?"
"Nobles are human, but so are townspeople, so are merchants, and so are serfs. I have simply chosen to excise a tiny fraction of tumors to save the vast majority."
"To hundreds of thousands of serfs, I am their supreme savior, delivering them from a dignity-stripped existence where they were treated as nothing more than 'gray cattle.'"
"To the people plagued by vampires, I am a righteous arbiter. I eradicated those bloodsucking bats that preyed upon them and exterminated House Lackman, who drained their blood for centuries. They have every reason to be grateful to me."
"I trust you can see that for the majority of the populace, I brought a better life. I founded a new kingdom and freed them from the rotten old order of the Northlands..."
"Yet you care only about those negligible obstacles standing in the way? Do they truly represent 'justice for the majority'?"
The red dragon looked down at her with a faint, wry smile, delivering his final verdict word by word:
"If my deeds cannot be counted as righteous, then every noble in the Northlands deserves to hang from the gallows."
Chapter 245